


Spectrum

by facetofcathy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-29
Updated: 2009-03-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:52:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean gets a hospital visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spectrum

**Author's Note:**

> Tag to 4.16 On the Head of a Pin
> 
>  
> 
> Contains physics, metaphysics and quite possibly metafiction.

_Do not all charms fly  
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?  
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:  
We know her woof, her texture; she is given  
In the dull catalogue of common things.  
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,  
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,  
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—  
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made  
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade._

_John Keats_

* * *

 

There was light and sound and scent, but it was nothing set against the pain. The pain was in every part of him, parts the drugs couldn't touch. Someone was in the room with him. He'd woken twitching with the urge to run, and he could hear the small sounds a body makes. There was no purposeful movement, so not a nurse. It was not Sam. Once his heart slowed back down, he sensed stillness, not threat—so Castiel again, maybe.

Dean opened his eyes. "That's new," he said.

The rainbow on his ceiling jerked and settled back into smooth bands of colour. He stared at the rainbow, but it was Sam, Sammy, he was seeing—no more than eight years old and bouncing in the back seat of the car, pointing out the window at a rainbow arching over a corn field. The memory was so vivid, he could almost smell the leather of the car seats and the burnt dust smell of the dry corn. Dean had tried to tell him the whole yarn about pots of gold and leprechauns, but Sammy wouldn't have it. He had known what made a rainbow, and he'd chattered away, telling Dean all about prisms and light and how there was even light you couldn't see. He'd been enthralled by the idea of the invisible light, his little-boy's tongue stumbling over the word infrared, pronouncing ultraviolet with awe, and urging Dean to share his wonder.

Dean had stolen a prism from the science room at his school in the next town they stopped in, and Sammy had kept it in his pocket for months until he'd lost it somewhere down the endless road, and he'd grieved fiercely for it until their father had told him sharply to forget about it, and Sam had stilled into sullen silence.

Years later, when it was just the two of them back on that endless road, Dean had found some night vision goggles at an army surplus store, and Sam had pulled his on, and said, "Look, Dean, it's Infa Red."

"Try not to lose these, Sammy," Dean had answered. "I actually paid for them."

The rainbow winked out, and the bed dipped beside him. "They've got me on the good drugs," he said, because he knew she was gone, had seen her go with his own eyes, and added her to the endless list of the ones lost forever, the faces that marched across his dreams.

"Hello, Dean," Anna said.

"How—"

"It's a long story, I guess I just"—she waved her hand, and Dean saw the glint of glass in her palm—"lived in this body for a long time, I missed it." She frowned down at the prism in her palm.

"New hobby?" Dean nodded at her hand.

She looked up and smiled, and he would swear the pain was less. "I was waiting for you to wake up, so I went to the children's ward. I used to do that before, well—when I thought I was just an ordinary person. We were making rainbows."

"You stole that?" Dean asked, grinning.

"I'll give it back," she said, and grinned back at him.

"So you were waiting for me to wake up, huh?"

"I wanted to see you for myself. I know Castiel was here."

"Yeah," Dean said, and the pain was rising again, making it hard to think straight. "He was a real bundle of joy, knows just how to cheer a guy up."

"What did he tell you, Dean?"

"All kinds of fun things. Nothing like a rousing discussion of apocalyptic doom to make the time just fly. Uriel's dead, but I guess you know that. Other than that—oh, and the fact that the future of the world hinges on me, of all people—not much."

"Castiel is troubled," she said, and she didn't look too untroubled herself.

"Yeah? So what are you saying, that I shouldn't listen to him?"

"No, not that, more that you should consider the source, and that you should consider also the things he doesn't tell you."

"Such as?" Dean said, and he was getting really tired of all these half-truths and full-on bullshit.

"I killed Uriel, Dean."

Okay, that was pretty straight forward. "_You_ did."

"He was killing the other angels. I chose to act, to save Castiel."

"Funny, Cas forgot to mention that."

"Castiel believes, he has been told to believe, that you are fated to play a role in the fight—"

"Yeah, yeah, I got all that, righteous man and all that bullcrap. I'll tell you what I told him, find someone else, I left too much of myself in hell." Why couldn't they just understand, he had nothing left. "I'm not the man I used to be," he said.

"I don't think that's true, Dean." Anna took his hand in hers, and he didn't have the strength to pull away. "I don't think you left any of yourself in hell. It isn't here on Earth that you are less than whole. I think it was in hell where you were missing the key part of yourself."

"What part's that? Because I checked, I think I had all my bits down there, at least most of the time."

"Your body, Dean. I know what happened to you felt real, that you seemed to be corporeal but it isn't the same. I spent years in this body, I was a baby, I grew up, I was fully and only human. I don't think Castiel can understand that; I don't think he realizes—I don't think _you_ realize how much of what you are is in your flesh."

"The flesh is weak, isn't that the saying?"

Anna squeezed his hand. "The body is strong, Dean. The body feels love and pain and joy, the urge to fight, to flee, desire—all those things that make your heart race and your palms sweat. Your body is what makes you human. What Castiel made you do to Alistair, that was no thing for a human to be doing."

"I've done worse, a thousand times worse, a thousand times over."

"Did it feel the same? Was it as easy to ignore your own revulsion, to not feel any remorse? Or was your body sickened by what you did?"

"Yes, no—I don't know. Anna, what are you telling me, are you saying I shouldn't feel guilty for what I did in hell?"

"I'm telling you to try to forgive yourself. I'm telling you what I told Castiel, it's hard to make your own choices and live with the consequences, but it's worth it."

"Now you sound like Sam."

"Sam has chosen his path with his eyes open."

Dean stared at her, incredulous. "Are you telling me you approve of whatever the hell he's doing?"

"I think he needs to make his own choices, do what he thinks is right. I spent a lot of time with Ruby, Dean. And I've had time, infinite time, to think about how a demon, the man who is supposed to defeat Lucifer and the man who is supposed to be Lucifer's tool all chose to save me from the angels who wanted to kill me."

"What about fate? Castiel seemed pretty sure about that, that it's all destiny and what I want doesn't rate jack."

"It's easy to put your faith in destiny. It is what we are taught to do, we angels, let go the weight of responsibility and fly unfettered, certain in our duty and our faith. We believe that we are the light of heaven, and the demons are the darkness, the absence of light." Anna lifted her hand and the rainbow spread out across the white hospital ceiling. "I don't think it's that simple."


End file.
